How to Drink Water

Now, if you were to guess what I am missing the most from home, I’m sure you would say, “I know Andy, and he’s addicted to ice tea and a nice cold glass of milk.” Well, I can safely say that I found something that I miss even more: clean water, as much as I want, when I want it!

Now, I’m used to drinking 2-3 L of water at work, when I was just sitting at the computer…it’s good for me, and I learned to enjoy drinking that much water. Well, I found out that it’s really difficult to drink this much in Brazil. Even when we’re in John’s house, or Jocelito’s house, which are modern, beautiful houses, I have to get water out of a water filter in the fridge or out of a big bottle in the kitchen. The water comes out slowly, and I feel bad drinking a lot of it.

Now, we’re in Serrinha, and the water source is a well that’s a 5 minute walk away. Usually, the houses here have water pumped to them from this well, but the pump broke in October, and they haven’t been able to get a replacement yet, but they should soon. So everyday, the men have to walk down to the well and bring back enough for the day. Luckily, we were fortunate enough for them to bring some back for us.

So I thought that I would describe how long it takes Cait and I to get clean water to drink. We first pour the milky white water into three 2L bottles that the men gave us, and put in 6 crushed up little seeds. These seeds are pretty dang cool…an elementary school kid found out for her science fair project that when you put them in dirty water, it makes all the sediment fall out! They’re actually doing research on these seeds in some of the universities in Rio. Anyway, so I put 6 crushed up seeds in each bottle; this takes 10 minutes per bottle. Then I put the bottles in the little fridge in the school, so at least we have cold water, which is awesome! So the bottles then have to sit for hours…usually 4-6 hours.

Then we pull the bottles out one by one and filter them into my Nalgene. We got a really spiffy water filter for our wedding from some of the guys (Thanks!) and it’s literally saved our stomachs from amoebic dysentery (John got it the first time he was here). It works so well that it actually clogs after a liter or two of filtering. So after 10 minutes of filtering to get a liter of water (it should only take a minute or so if there’s no sediment), I have to take the ceramic filter out and wipe off some of the dirt that’s accumulated. So toward the end of my filtering spree, it’s going much slower, and by the end it’s dirty again. Luckily, Cait and I both have CamelBacks, so we pour the water from the Nalgene into the CamelBacks, so we can have a couple of liters each accumulated. Then it’s time to fill the bottles up again and add the seeds J Needless to say, it’s really made me appreciate being able to safely drink water out of the tap in the US!!!